


The Key to Redemption

by River_of_Dreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s09e23 Do You Believe in Miracles?, Fix-It, Gen, Imprisonment, Suicide Attempt, The Author Regrets Nothing, the author is starting to feel like a fix-it machine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 01:16:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3362357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/River_of_Dreams/pseuds/River_of_Dreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hannah doesn’t drop the key and Gadreel hesitates for a moment that will change everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Key to Redemption

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beekeepercain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/gifts).



> SPOILERS for episode 9x23 “Do You Believe in Miracles“? If you haven’t watched it, run away right now unless you don’t mind spoilers.
> 
> WARNING for self-harm, suicide attempt, guilt and self-worth issues. I mean it. Even if you saw the episode and know what to expect, chances are you interpret the scene differently and my interpretation might be still difficult for you to read (although it ends on a hopeful note). Continue at your own risk.
> 
> I blame this one entirely on Chakatai who gave me more Gadreel feels than I knew what to do with; who is an amazing writer, an equally amazing person and a delight to talk to. Here’s to our shared hatred of the “redemption is death“ trope. May it be duly and thoroughly forgotten at least in fanfiction.

It ends before he has the time to react. One moment they are in Metatron’s study, the gentle thrum of the Tablet suffusing the space, the next the walls and bars and layers of warding rise around them and between them and enclose them both so tightly that they could just as well be human babes for all the power that is left to them. Gadreel lashes out and the walls absorb it quietly like layers of cotton, the action stilled in silence as if it never happened, and he yells, protests even as he knows any pleas he makes will fall on deaf ears, or – at worst – no ears at all.

There are barely a few seconds of denial, a few precious seconds when he doesn’t yet believe it is happening, doesn’t believe it is real this time. But this is no flashback in itself (although it causes plenty, years and years of loneliness and Thaddeus’s gleeful smirk and blades crippling his Grace and the pain in his wings which are in an even worse condition now) and it seems that the part of him that always knew he’ll end up back here was just proven right.

It is terribly easy to believe.

Terribly hard to battle the desperation. He tries to think but it is like wading through fog, the wards pressing heavy against him in their familiarity, snug and suffocating like second skin made of tar. He belongs here. He died here (so long ago, suspended like a prehistoric animal at the bottom of a bog). How could he even think to pretend he had a chance to rise from the ashes, to restore his reputation and take his ~~rightful~~ former place among his siblings? It was a trick of the light, the last breath of fresh air which he was destined to waste, nothing more, because he belongs here.

He belongs here.

Distantly he’s aware of Castiel and Hannah arguing, although the words come to him blurred by white noise that seems to fill his mind. He spares a moment of pity for Castiel, because Castiel isn’t yet aware he has lost, that he is lost, the morass pulling at him already to drag him down and make him still (centuries from now; it is no mercy to bear conviction as strong as Castiel’s in here).

The kind of conviction Gadreel himself once had before his world narrowed to getting out of here. How utterly ironic that when he finally did, it was through no design of his own, nor, in all honesty, of anybody else’s. He’s under no illusion that Metatron wanted to release him. No, the opening of his prison was just a side effect of a grander plan, and quite possibly an unwelcome one, as side effects are prone to be. And all he did with that unexpected boon was to turn wrong at every crossroads set before him (except perhaps the last one; allying himself openly with Castiel and the Winchesters was the first decision that felt _right_ without hesitancy or doubt, the first that truly aligned with what he once was; but then look where that led him).

He is not going to get another chance. He is back, this time for good, and the only novelty he can expect is the change of tormentor, as he murdered the previous one, and of a companion in the torment, for the same reason (and isn’t that in itself why he deserves to be here?).

That’s when his gaze falls on the rubble at his side and everything in him comes to a halt.

For a long, long time he just stares, barely believing there is something to mar the unforgiving perfection of these walls, that there is anything at all that he can use for his own ends, whether it is actually useful to him or not. But he is a soldier, both by training and in essence, and gradually, reluctantly, the tactician in him comes to life. His thoughts are slow at first like the wheels of a rusty clockwork, but it is not his second but his first nature to think, to combine, to strategize.

In the end it is so very simple and almost poetic. Every angel had been created to serve a cause. He’d forgotten that, too caught up in his own suffering, too ashamed to think of the mission he’d failed. It figures that he would get the chance to save the cause but not himself. He’d laugh, but that would alert his guard too soon.

He schools his expression, makes sure Hannah is still focusing on Castiel, and reaches for the sharpest stone he can see.

The first few cuts don’t hurt all that much; he’s used to pain. But then the sigil starts to take hold on his Grace, to bind it and twist it, and that brings memories of sharper blades, of punishments without purpose and of patient, thorough crippling, all to prevent him from fighting back, and distantly he wonders if he’s insane to do this to himself now.

But this is not a punishment, and it is not without purpose. It is deliverance, the mercy of an escape coupled with the chance to serve his mission once more. It is clear he was not found worthy of a life outside these bars, but at least he doesn’t have to suffer life behind them. He can exchange his fear, his shame, his failures for a hope for Castiel, for the Winchesters, and through them for humanity; he can, once more, protect rather than be used as a weapon.

He cannot bring himself to be grateful (although he realizes he should) because alongside his faults he must also sacrifice all his hopes; his dreams of freedom and forgiveness, of mistakes finally put behind him, of acceptance and yes, joy; but he can accept the judgment at least, carving it into his skin with a hand that doesn’t tremble.

He hears words tumbling from his lips – his confession, his creed – and it helps to focus on them rather than at the horror of what he is doing to himself; the finality of what he intends to do. He cannot think of that, cannot stop and think at all lest he loses his courage and it will be all for nothing, thousands of years of imprisonment more with no one to blame but himself.

It is nearly done.

He gives instruction (and that at least is easy to do, to take care of the details as if it was any other plan), tries to make sure both his siblings will be safe. There is little he can do to control the blast. He can feel himself expanding even as he’s more tightly bound than ever; his freedom is in reach and the relief of it feels like one last flight.

He sees Hannah fumble with the key, her eyes wide, but it doesn’t matter; she comes too late to stop him now. There’s triumph in it: he is a prisoner, he should not have the power to escape under his own terms, but by some mercy he was granted that. He will have his salvation as long as he doesn’t let her come near him, and that he won’t, he can’t; he takes a breath to give her a last warning before he is forced to take her with him.

The door to the prison flies open with a bang that reverberates through the hall.

It breaks the wards and it breaks his concentration. The strange illusion of clarity that left only one path open shatters into a thousand pieces and all of them hurt to look at. It’s only Hannah that stands between him and freedom, small and bright and petrified like a mouse who just realized she has wandered into a lion’s cage. The last he’d seen her like this there were bodies littering the floor, taste of bile in his throat and _leave one to tell the tale. Just one._

He wants to ask her to step aside but the words die in him with that memory. Silence fills him to the brim, suffocates him and leaves him helpless, immobile. The stone feels unbearably heavy in his hand. He is not sure he would be able to fight for it if she decided to take it from him, but he knows she won’t. She has no reason to stop him from killing himself, the sister he’d beaten half to death. He just needs to give her time to get away so that he doesn’t hurt her anymore.

He watches her make a tentative step back. The door opened to her left, in easy reach of her free hand (her right still clutching the key like a lifeline). He waits for her to slam it back in his face. Then he’ll need to wait just a moment longer to make sure she is at a safe distance before he triggers the sigil. It does not feel like salvation anymore. The rapture that allowed him to see anything positive in his death slipped irrevocably from his grasp and what is left is the harsh reality: there is no guarantee he would have been allowed to live had they avoided capture. His crimes are too great, too grave. Had Heaven not been so broken even before the Fall, he would have died the day he raised his hand against the Prophet. The ones who used to enforce the law may be gone, but the law itself certainly is not.

Hannah makes a second step.

Then a third.

The passage remains open.

For the longest time he just stares, unable to comprehend the situation. The wards are still there, just at the edge of his senses like open maws waiting to bite into him again, but there is no one to make them so. Hannah will not and he does not know why.

He tests the length of his leash by stepping just a little closer to the door.

Nothing happens.

Hannah’s eyes are still wide with fear, but when he doesn’t move again, she swallows and nods.

He takes a deep breath and steps over the threshold, the shadow of the wards slipping over him and past him.

He is out and he isn’t sure what to do with himself.

Hannah holds out a hand to him, palm up. He glances at it, then back to her eyes.

“I won’t let you kill another angel.“ Her voice is thin, quivering, but the conviction behind it is unmistakable.

He wants to protest that the only one he’d be killing this time would be himself. Her outstretched fingers twitch, fragile, gentle, and he is taken aback by the thought that maybe, just maybe, she knows.

He doesn’t have it in him to find out. It would be too much to expect her compassion to extend to him. Maybe she was just worried for Castiel, caught in too close quarters and unable to escape. But why then was it his cell she rushed so desperately to open?

He hands over the stone. The relief in her eyes shames him.

“It is true,” he says, because there is still the mission (much easier to think about than to consider the implications of Hannah’s actions) and he doesn’t want to think about fighting her again, not even to wrestle the keys to Castiel’s cell from her. “I recruited those angels. I did not know. Metatron…“ He takes a breath when he realizes he is doing it again, making excuses for himself instead of furthering the cause. “Metatron cast us all down. He doesn’t care about any of us. He will continue to kill us when it serves him, and I am afraid he will be no kinder to humanity. Help us. Please.“

She looks at him, then at Castiel who is now clutching the bars of his cell, grim and intense as if willing himself outside.

“You won’t kill him,“ she tells her former leader, voice firm. “Metatron. You won’t kill him. I won’t be a part of that.“

Castiel looks like he wants to object at first, but then he settles for: “I will do what I can.”

It is, thankfully, enough for Hannah. Gadreel watches her free the other angel and, curiously enough, it feels like he was just given a little more freedom himself. His relief is short-lived, though, as Castiel immediately strides to him, his posture rigid, expression stormy. He can’t help but make a step back, but then he forces himself to still; whatever it is, he can hardly protest an attack when he just nearly killed himself.

Castiel stops directly in front of him, glaring him down in anger, and raises his hands between them awkwardly as if he didn’t know what to do with them; it doesn’t help that he is still bound. In the end he goes for Gadreel’s upper arm and squeezes it with one hand, the other just dangling in the cuffs.

“Don’t. _Ever._ Do that again.“

Gadreel blinks, taken aback. Surely Castiel understands that he didn’t intend to harm him?

“It was the only way. It was a risk I admit, but you needed to be freed.”

“Not at that price. I’m not more important than you, Gadreel. I am not a leader. I most certainly am not a god to whom sacrifices should be made! You turned on Metatron for treating our siblings like weapons. Don’t do the same to yourself. Least of all in my name.“

Gadreel falls silent, his thoughts in too much of a jumble to voice them. He wants to argue, to defend his decision, but something tells him that wouldn’t be appreciated by either of his siblings. Moreover, their concern, however misguided, is too precious to turn down that easily.

“I… won’t,“ he says eventually, because he doesn’t expect a similar situation to occur anytime soon and because it is clear neither Castiel nor Hannah would let him avoid the issue completely, unwilling as he is to look into it too closely. It is mostly for that reason that he reminds them: “There is little time. We should go.”

To his relief, Castiel lets go of him, maybe not entirely satisfied with his reply but too much of a soldier to delay any longer.

“Yes. Try to avoid fighting. You are vulnerable now.”

Gadreel nods. His Grace is still bound, twisted and stretched to its breaking point. It is the nature of a sigil written directly into Grace that it cannot be healed right away; it will need to gradually unwind on its own.

“We will all try to avoid fighting,” Hannah frowns at them.

“Of course,” Castiel agrees, although he doesn’t seem to have much hope for such an outcome. Hannah gives him a last stern look and turns to lead the way.

Gadreel steps out of the prison, his siblings at his sides, and for the first time it is under his own power and for his own merit. By an incomprehensible act of mercy he was granted another chance. He does not expect to be forgiven that easily or, in truth, at all, but it is beyond doubt that he is wanted here, that he is being trusted as an ally and, miraculously, maybe even protected as a brother.

It nearly overwhelms him but he pushes the emotion down, forces himself to think about the situation at hand because it is far from over. There will be time to let it all wash over him and, perhaps, cleanse him in the process, but that has not yet come. For now he vows, silently, that he won’t disappoint the trust shown to him, that he will do everything within his powers to mend what he can.

He straightens his shoulders and holds his head high as he prepares to face his other siblings, and for the first time in millennia he knows he is where he is meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback of any kind most welcome!


End file.
